


Spreading Wings

by blueorangecrush



Category: You Could Make a Life Series - Taylor Fitzpatrick
Genre: Breaking Up & Making Up, M/M, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 19:38:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17049350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueorangecrush/pseuds/blueorangecrush
Summary: Liam goes to Detroit, because that's what you do in his line of work.  He can't say he's leaving Mike behind, because Mike already left him behind.





	1. firsts (Liam)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [frogy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/frogy/gifts).



> Hey! It's our favorite hockey pest. I was trying for more of the Detroit LDR time, but since the new expanded canon covered it so well, I ended up with Liam POV of the separation instead.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Liam's had a lot of firsts in Edmonton. He can only talk about some of them.

Liam doesn’t want to take the call from Buffon, but he’s not stupid enough to just ignore it, either. You can’t just ignore calls from your agent – well, _ever,_ but especially not at this time of year. The last he’d heard from Buffon, he’d gotten official word that Edmonton had given him a qualifying offer, that he could take it or they could negotiate for more.  Of course, Buffon was going to ask – no, _demand_ – that Liam negotiate for more.  It’s his commission check, too.

So they had been trying to get Edmonton to come up to two million, a decent bridge deal kind of thing. But now Buffon’s calling to tell Liam that Detroit offer sheeted him for two and a half million over the next four years, and that Edmonton’s not going to match.

That’s what he gets, apparently, for not just agreeing to the qualifying offer, not just signing the damn contract when he had a damn chance.  He gets offer sheeted, and the team that drafted him apparently doesn’t give a fuck about matching it, is just going to let him go, would rather have an extra second-rounder in 2018 than keep Liam, who had _been_ a second-rounder himself, and pay him ten million over the next four years.

It hurts.  It hurts that the front office thinks Liam isn’t good enough to be worth keeping on their admittedly incredibly shit team.  It hurts to have been one of the young kids – like Matheson, someone he even barely got to _meet,_ it feels like – who was supposed to turn the team around, was supposed to make it into something special.  Liam wanted to be part of the solution, but somehow management’s decided that he’s part of the problem.  Or, maybe not part of the problem, they didn’t _actually_ trade Liam, but they also aren’t even going to consider matching Detroit’s offer sheet.

It hurts that he’s going to have to leave Ben behind.  Ben’s just all-around one of the best guys Liam knows.  Morris from Fitzgerald, or Fitzgerald from Morris, isn’t going to be the call on the ice anymore, and Liam’s going to miss that.  Liam’s going to miss movie nights, and bar nights, and Xbox nights with Ben.  Going to miss hanging out with Ben’s older brother Luke when they play Calgary, miss Luke flirting with Liam and Ben glaring at them both.  Not that anything would have happened with Luke anyway, Ben had nothing to worry about, but it was…flattering. And Liam will miss it.

It hurts that he’s going to have to leave Rogers and Lady Rogers.  They’re getting married this offseason, and Liam knows he’s still invited to the wedding. It’s just that he didn’t think the wedding was going to be some big good-bye thing, at least from Liam’s point of view, obviously the happy couple will be too busy being happy to think about their troublesome teenage former houseguest.  They’d both been far too good to him even as he drove them out of their goddamn minds with his rookie year shenanigans.  Rogers might have been upset, might have freaked out a _little_ bit, when he found out the rookie that was supposed to be living with them was spending too many of his nights with their team’s thirty-year-old goon. But while he’d confronted both Liam and Mike, together and separately about it, he’d at least not gone to team management or, God forbid, to Liam’s _parents_ about any of it.  Even after Liam got a place on his own because Mike wouldn’t let him move in full-time, Melissa still fed Liam whenever…well, whenever Mike got sick enough of Liam to kick him out.

Mike.  That’s the worst part of all of this.  Liam’s going to have to leave Mike, for good. Never mind that Mike’s already ended things, packed up every last bit of anything that looked like Liam’s in his apartment into a couple of bags, demanded his key back, slammed the door on Liam and locked it behind him. 

Never mind that Mike’s on LTIR with no scheduled return date, that there might not be a return date at all.  Liam’s going to have to leave behind the hope that he clung to for as long as he could, that Mike would get better, would come back and play the rest of the season, the next season, however long he could keep going, would…would let Liam back in, would let Liam stay.

Liam sternly tells himself to sleep, not to cry. He’s going to have all the media all over him tomorrow, because offer sheets might not be against the rules but they aren’t exactly standard operating procedure.  It doesn’t exactly fit his image to show up to interviews looking like he’s cried himself to sleep, even if that’s what he feels like doing – or looking like he hasn’t slept at all. 

There’s a lot to like about where Liam’s going. He thinks. He doesn’t know much at all about Detroit as a city, but the team’s got a brilliant history and its present day is pretty good, people say they’re real contenders and they’ve certainly given Edmonton all they could handle and more in their matchups over the last few years. It’s enough that he can say nice things like he’s supposed to.

He can say nice things about Edmonton, too, about the team that drafted him, about all the firsts he’s had here.  He can pack the souvenirs – draft day jersey, jersey from his first NHL game, pucks for his first point and his first goal and his 100thpoint.  He can thank Edmonton for the start to his career.

He can’t tell the truth, because it’s not his truth to tell.  He can’t say that he let contract negotiations break down after his injured boyfriend threw him out.  He can’t talk about the more scandalous firsts – first time legally getting drunk in a bar, first blowjob, first time getting fucked, first…well, nobody wants those details of his formerly amazing sex life.

First time falling in love, falling so hard that he doesn’t how there can ever be a second time.


	2. got your number

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Liam asks if Rogers still has Mike’s number.
> 
> “Had it. Not sure it’s the right one. But I can find out and give it to you if it is, okay?” Rogers says. He doesn’t sound too happy about it.

Liam hadn’t called, or texted, or – anything – when he heard that Mike was formally retiring from the NHL. Not to Mike himself, and not about Mike to anyone else.

If anyone had asked, anyone who didn’t know the history he had with Mike or the way Mike made sure that time _was_ history, Liam could have always said it was because he was too busy dealing with his own career, his own way out of Edmonton.  He’d been in Halifax, back with his folks, anyway.  It was the off-season, months _into_ the off-season for a team that played like as much shit as Edmonton had, two seasons ago. 

If anyone who _did_ know anything about that history had asked Liam, he could have said it was because he’d been sure Mike would hang up on a call, delete a text unread, because that was what Mike had been _doing_ to Liam, right along. Mike wanted Liam to move on so badly, he cut off every path Liam had back to Mike.  Liam has sometimes wondered if Mike had the ear of team management enough somehow to try to persuade them to get rid of Liam – it seems a ridiculous idea, after all

Liam could have just avoided the entire topic of Mike Brouwer’s retirement, and that’s what he pretty much did, because the truth is, Liam is a shitty liar and he knows it.  So he hadn’t said anything to his then-recently-former teammates at the time.  Even now, Liam doesn’t talk about it any more than he has to, to anyone, really.  Seems like it’s what Mike would want, and Liam can do that much for him even if he can’t do shit else, even if he still doesn’t understand why Mike wouldn’t let him do shit else.

It’s been two years since the offer sheet, since Mike’s retirement announcement literally one week later, and Liam feels bad about it whenever he stops to think about it. Feels like he should have said something then, even if he has no idea what that something would’ve been. Wonders if he should say something now.

Not that he has any way _to_ say anything now.  He’s pretty sure Mike isn’t in Edmonton anymore.  Guesses Mike’s back in Minnesota with family, or something.  Not like he’s heard anything from anyone about Mike doing anything else.  Nobody talks about Mike, not because they’re trying to avoid upsetting Liam, it’s just – nobody talks about a washed-up has been of an enforcer, unless it’s to be thankful that he won’t be playing against their team, won’t hit anyone into the boards or drop gloves with someone who’s no match for his skill with his fists.

Maybe he can ask Rogers, next time he’s in Edmonton. There’s a new baby Rogers, and as a sort of billet son of the Rogers family, the least Liam can do is stop by to properly admire the kid, maybe leave a few bribes – er, baby gifts – to loosen Rogers up enough to get some kind of meaningful information about Mike out of him.

That plan doesn’t work, because Liam gets too busy admiring the kid to think about his own pathetic love life, past or present or…whatever.  They’re peaceful and happy, the Rogers family, and Liam’s not about to disrupt that, and then forgets that he even _wanted_ to.

After the road trip’s over, though, after he’s safely back in Detroit, he calls Rogers.  After a suitable period of time chatting about the baby and about the teams they play for and their respective playoff chances, Liam asks about Mike.  Rogers confirms that Mike is, indeed, back in Minnesota near his family, but doesn’t want to answer much else about what Mike might be doing with himself these days. Some kind of family business, maybe.

_Maybe a restaurant,_ Liam wonders.  Mike’s cooking was always good enough for that, even though Mike would tell anyone who said so to shut up, to stop making a big deal over not much of anything.

Liam asks if Rogers still has Mike’s number.

“Had it.  Not sure it’s the right one.  But I can find out and give it to you if it is, okay?” Rogers says.  He doesn’t sound too happy about it.  Then again, he was never exactly a ray of sunshine about Mike when it came to Liam, or vice versa.  Credit where it’s due, he never tried to break them up, but he seemed relieved when it was clear that things were over.

Liam thanks him, trying to sound grateful but not too eager.  He’d like to think he’s learned a few things. 

A couple days later, there’s a text from Rogers, with a phone number.  Minnesota area code, like Liam had thought.  Then a second text:

_Whatever happens is on your head, kid, don’t blame me._

_i get that,_ Liam texts back. 

He programs the number Rogers gave him, _Mike’s_ number, in his phone as “Somebody I. UsedToKnow”.  But he doesn’t actually text Mike, not at first.  The Wings have a rough stretch of games before the Christmas break, and then, well, it’ll _be_ Christmas and Liam doesn’t know who Mike might be spending Christmas with but he doesn’t hate Mike enough to wreck that or anything.

He waits until January, until a week before the Wings are scheduled to play the North Stars, and sends: _can i c u next week?_

Then he realizes he’s an idiot, Mike’s not going to know why some Michigan number texted him that, so he adds _its liam._

He sees the read notification go off but doesn’t get an answer.  Maybe that is his answer, maybe he’s been blocked.  But then he gets back one word: _Okay._   Proper capital at the start, period at the end.

He starts impatiently counting down the days, then the hours.  As soon as the plane lands, he sends another text, after trying a few times to spell the stupid city name and just giving up:

_i'm in minnynyapolis. can i c u tonite?_

Again the single word:  _Okay._  

The door that was slammed in Liam's face two and a half years ago is opening. Just a crack, but it might well be enough.


End file.
